He fell silent, staring at the TV; its babbling nonsense noise was too loud between them. Brianna took the remote from him and stopped the movie. The look on his face was painful, a wretched struggle that said he wanted so much to go further but couldn’t. Not without her help.
She rested her hand on his chest. “You have a sister,” she said—prompting him quietly. He’d refused to talk about his sister before. Maybe he would now that they’d spent more time together. He seemed to like it here with her—and she liked having him here. All of him.
“Yeah. Erica.” He looked at Brianna, then looked away again, focusing on the wall. “It was just me and her growing up. Our parents were always busy, but we looked out for each other. Jeremy, too.”
“Who is Jeremy?”
“Her husband. He was my best friend. I guess he is again.” He gave a little shrug, but the tenseness of his body gave away the motion as a cover-up. “I don’t know why he would want to be my friend, though.”
Her heart twisted at the look of abject failure on his face. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“No,” he said sharply, then stopped. He practically deflated, sighing and giving her an apologetic glance. “Yes.”
She only smiled and leaned into him. This moment was fragile, and she wouldn’t pressure him. He’d only close up. Instead she let him take his time; she could almost see the wheels turning behind his eyes, thoughts gathering. Finally, he took a deep breath and began.
“I’m still not completely sure how Jeremy and I became friends. We got in a fight over something in junior high, beat each other up…and became best friends in the way only boys could be. We were different in a lot of ways. Yet the same.” He let out a brief laugh. “He didn’t have much family, either. So we were like brothers. But Erica…I think they fell in love the moment they met, even when she was still young enough to be following me around calling me Tommy.”
“Tommy,” she repeated, arching a brow.
He winced. “Yeah. I hated it. Still do. She still calls me Tommy. So does Jeremy.” The smile on his lips was fond, distant. “I guess while they were busy falling in love, so was I. With Nicole. We were stupid. Got married at eighteen. I was so love-blind that I let her mold me into the man she wanted. I got the job she wanted. Bought the house she wanted. Did anything and everything she wanted, even turning a blind eye to the men she brought home when I wasn’t there. And there were a lot of them.”
Brianna’s breath caught. How could any woman do that to someone who loved her—who was capable of the kind of raw, real love that even now she could hear in Th
omas’s voice? “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“I’m not. It’s what gave me the courage to walk away from her and realize how miserable I really was. But not before I screwed a lot of things up.” Pain hardened his voice. He looked away from Brianna and stared fixedly at the wall. Each word was clipped, forced. “She said she’d slept with Jeremy. Worse, that he’d forced her. That was back when I was still making excuses for her, when she’d pretend to be sweet and swear she’d never do it again. Deep down, I didn’t believe her. But I reacted badly. I beat the hell out of Jeremy and told him never to come back to my house. Our friendship ended the way it began…only he didn’t hit back. He just looked at me, like I’d taken the most important thing in the world from him.”
His fist was clenching and unclenching against his knee, as if remembering every blow. He looked down at it, staring at it as if it was somehow to blame. “I guess I had,” he murmured. “Erica and I were his real family. And he loved her so much.”
“You didn’t know,” she whispered, her heart breaking for him.
“But I should have.” He lifted his head, pinning her down with his stare. “I should have seen it. I should have known he wouldn’t touch her. He hated her. Everyone did but me. I wised up and split with Nicole a few days later, but it was too late. He was gone. I sent him away and he joined the Marines soon after our fight. I wanted to write to him so many times, but I didn’t.”
She wanted so much to hold him. Draw him against her bosom and just cradle him close, stroke his hair, soothe him. But he was still so tense. “But they’re married now,” she offered. “So it couldn’t have been that bad.”
“Maybe,” he allowed. “But it wouldn’t have happened if not for pure coincidence. He was walking down a desert road with a killer hangover and a few bruises, and she found him. Brought him home with her. Fate gave them a second chance. Not me.” Finally, he met her eyes. The struggle in his had been replaced by something she thought might be relief—and again that plea for understanding that she’d seen so often before. Had Nicole understood him so little? “Not everyone gets a second chance handed to them. I want to make my own. Do what I want, not what someone else wants for me.”
What someone else wants for me. Like a family. A future together, with three children that weren’t even his own.
In that moment, she was tempted to run away again. Protect her heart from his inevitable departure. But if she did that, she’d be shutting him out of her life the same way she’d shut everyone out of her life when she’d turtled up and turned into a protective Mama Bear. So she leaned her head against his shoulder, offering the comfort of her closeness if she could give nothing else.
“Anything can be forgiven, Thomas. If they hated you, they wouldn’t talk to you at all. Do they talk to you?”
“Yeah. Of course.” He leaned into her. His warmth wrapped around her. “But I still feel guilty as hell. I love them so much.”
And I might be falling in love with you. She bit her tongue, swallowing the words back. How could she fall in love with him when she knew their time was limited? And how could she even think about love when he constantly held himself distant from her?
Tonight had been a start, but that’s all it was. In a few days, he’d be gone. And she’d be alone. Again.
Chapter Twelve
On Thursday afternoon, creeping even closer to Thomas’s scheduled departure date from Vegas, Brianna sat beside Cody on the living room floor. His new Transformer and the instructions were spread across the carpet. Brianna squinted at the paper. Cody had earned the toy by spending Sunday helping Thomas clean out the rain gutters. When he’d first gotten it, Cody had been so excited he hadn’t even tried to transform it. It had taken a few days for the glamor to wear off, and now he wanted to make Optimus into a truck.
Unfortunately, Optimus had about six million moving parts, and the instructions were either in Chinese or Sanskrit. Or maybe it was just that it wasn’t possible within the laws of physics to turn a robot’s arm that way.
She twisted it anyway. It snapped in half. She cringed and dropped the useless thing on the floor. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“I think you turned it the wrong way.” Cody picked up the instructions and studied them. “Girls don’t get Transformers. When’s Thomas going to get here? I bet he could do it.”